In the interests of time and actually, you know, talking about football games, this is going to be pretty terse compared to past years.
First up is the List of Shame, which is a list of teams with more than one FCS opponent. I’m happy to report that the list only has three teams on it this year. Virginia and Auburn are on it due to playing transitional FCS-to-FBS team Liberty. Florida is on it only because Idaho moved to FCS from FBS this season, which I suspect the Gators didn’t think would happen when they scheduled the game. So good job, everyone!
Next up is honoring the best OOC schedules. Ordinarily, you need to have a “legit rating” over 1 to be considered. Southern Cal reaches that threshold by playing Texas in addition to Notre Dame. Unfortunately, the only other team that meets the criteria is Florida State, which got there by playing their annual rival and a team effectively scheduled by their conference in Notre Dame. So, instead, I’m just going to list every team playing more than 1 team from the Power 5 (plus Notre Dame) this season, regardless of criteria and in no particular order:
- Florida State
- Pittsburgh
- Louisville
- Clemson
- Duke
- Southern California
- Texas
- West Virginia
- Northwestern
- Ohio State
- Purdue
Figuring out which major Power 5 conference doesn’t have any teams on this list is left as an exercise for the reader.
Speaking of conferences, here’s each conference’s average legit rating, accounting for the different number of OOC games payed:
- Pac-12 (0.229)
- Big 12 (0.2)
- ACC (0.178)
- SEC (0.156)
- Big Ten (0.131)
The Big Ten is last again. While I can admire, in some ways, not scheduling FCS teams, it would help if they also, you know, scheduled good teams more consistently. But hey, there’s always hope for the future. Especially for a future with fewer neutral site games.